


Welcome to Your New Life

by sungabraverday



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Backstory, Faked Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungabraverday/pseuds/sungabraverday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a few tries, two and a half decades, some stock scandals, a death threat, a plane crash, and an explosion before Q becomes who he has always been meant to be.</p><p>Q backstory, basically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to Your New Life

a.

He was the school chess champion. The teachers doted on him, but his classmates were less impressed.

It probably didn't help matters that he was the school Scrabble champion, and always filled in the crosswords in the morning papers in record time.

All around top student, and voted "most likely to take over the world", Alistair vowed to live up to his reputation.

 

b.

He had a minor in Art History, because it wasn't entirely seemly for someone with his background to just study Business. He would rather have studied Computer Science, but that would have been even less acceptable, and instead it was confined to his free time.

Instead he spent time in lecture halls and art galleries looking at paintings and identifying movements, brush strokes, and themes. He couldn't paint to save his life, but he appreciated their work. It just simply wasn't his medium.

His medium was the keyboard, and code spilling out secrets in numbers and letters and tiny points of light.

He never told his father that he enjoyed the classes.

 

c.

Time, for Alistair Wilkes-Green, was measured in seconds and rush hours.

He'd been working in the investment firm for two years after graduation when he was accused of insider trading. His numbers just seemed incredibly unrealistic, switching at the last possible second before a drop, day after day. Profits with his portfolio were 9.438% higher than the second place investor. It didn't take too long before someone got jealous.

Everyone knew the accusations were false - the data didn't match up. There were too many good trades, and Alistair didn't socialize anywhere near enough to have the insider knowledge. He left that to the rest of them, preferring to work on his very closely guarded algorithms. But his family was well enough known that they blamed it on the name, and not the math.

He was fired and an injunction banned him from working in the financial industry ever again.

He pocketed a tidy sum in compensation and went abroad. London and New York might not want him, but there would always be unscrupulous investors somewhere else who would take on a rogue.

Anyway, he was tired of the Tube at rush hour.

 

d.

Shanghai was no better than London on some counts, especially the public transit. Fortunately with the sums he was making, working for a series of manufacturing and mining and energy and various other corporations, making their stock prices increase - or fail to decrease - in ways that certainly stretched the definition of legal, he could work around that. None of them cared - that's why they hired him. It was a flawless plan, short-term contracts that were competitive and kept pushing his rates of pay higher as he made their computer systems stronger and more secure, and periodically bumped market prices with some very clever hacking that it would take a certified genius to tease out of the genuine transfers.

The price of stocks dropped sharply one morning as the US market crumbled overnight. A failsafe that he had manufactured in five different companies made only half of the stock sales for the first half hour after the markets opened go through - and of them only the small ones. It artificially kept the price high and by the time the failsafe dropped, it would have only been a loss for the investors, forcing quite a few to stick it out for the long haul.

It didn't go over well with one investment firm, and they put out a contract for his head. Alistair didn't worry at first, confident in the many security systems he had installed and the intense monitoring of all of his surrounding area, until a single bullet shattered his bathroom window and landed harmlessly in the bathtub. It was a warning, and Alistair read it loud and clear.

The next day he bought himself out of his contract. "You can't pay me enough to get shot at," he said as he handed over the paperwork in triplicate, with cash.

He flew back to London with no plan but getting away, and once there set about hacking the servers to remove every trace of his work. When he was satisfied that nothing remained, he found the man who had put the price on his head and left an email in his drafts box. It was as much a warning as the bullet had been.

That was the last that the world heard from Alistair Wilkes-Green.

 

e.

A man in a neat-pressed suit knocked on Alistair's door at three in the morning. He answered it a minute later, after activating the securities on his laptop.

"Mr. Wilkes-Green," he greeted him, and Alistair blinked. His flat was listed under Christian Berger, and all of his business under his full name was handled by an old friend in a bank out of the Caymans. He was very good at covering his tracks. It should have been impossible to find him.

He eyed the man warily, and said simply, "if you want my head you might as well take it. You certainly deserve it."

The man laughed. "I'm a headhunter of a different sort, Mr. Wilkes-Green, and I'd prefer your head on your shoulders, if it's all the same to you."

Alistair took five minutes to dress in slacks, shirt, tie, and cardigan, before accompanying the man out to the waiting black car.

 

f.

"You will have to behave in a way that complies with the laws of the United Kingdom in all ways."

"Fine."

"And be sworn to the strictest secrecy."

"Fine. You know, you've told me nothing I couldn't get from the moment you said that this was MI6, which I already knew from the moment you led me into Vauxhall Cross."

His interviewer, or more realistically, recruiter, looked vexed. "Under the circumstances, we feel that it would be best to ensure that no one does come looking for your head by making it appear that you've already died."

Alistair perked up completely. "I'd been contemplating doing that myself, but mere computer records don't have quite the same impact as real paper copies."

The smile he received in return was terse. "Who said anything about paper copies? A mysterious plane crash in the forests of - where are you supposed to be, again?"

"Mumbai."

"Of northern India, then. Or perhaps the ocean, that might be neater. A bit of publicity, but not too much, and you'll never have to worry again."

Alistair nodded consent.

"You'll be in a standard entry-level position to start with, of course. Standard salary - we are a government agency, there are rules we must comply with, and budgetary ones top the list. You've got plenty of time and talent potential, so you're well placed for promotion, if you do a good job."

"Fine. I'm assuming there are a number of contracts that need to be drawn up, polygraph tests taken, other such examinations. When do I start?"

"I've a preliminary contract here." He slid it across the table, and Alistair started in on it.

It took him five minutes of intense concentration before he looked up. "There’s just one thing that I'd like to add. You will not require me to take any aeroplanes as part of my duties. It's not that I mind them per se, but I'm not tempting fate."

The man across from him cracked a smile, a genuine one this time. "I'll make sure it's done for the full contract." He slid a pen across the table, and Alistair signed it with a flourish.

"Welcome to MI6, Mr. Berger, and to your new life."

 

g.

In the basement that served as Q-branch headquarters, he went only as Chris. The few there who might have remembered him from his Cambridge days would remember a boy with crisp Savile Row suits and neat short cut hair who wouldn't respond to anything but his full name. He wasn't that pretentious prick any more. That had been Alistair; he was Chris.

In some ways working for MI6 was nothing like anything he had imagined. The hours were still, loosely speaking, 9 to 5, although 8 to 7 was rather more common. The work was fascinating, and every time he thought he might have unoccupied moments in between fixing the MI6 servers - or MI5, if they very infrequently shared - he'd be handed an external agency to crack into without being noticed. He was doing what he did best, and with people who actually appreciated his talents.

It was never boring.

And no one tried to shoot at him, which was nice.

 

h.

He didn't find out that he had died until a copy of the Daily Mail arrived on his desk, with an attached note to look at page 31. There was an article about a private jet that had disappeared over the Indian Ocean, on route from Mumbai to Abu Dhabi. The pilot and the sole passenger, Alistair Wilkes-Green, were both believed to be dead, with no chance of survival. Chris read it with just a hint of a smile, and then turned the page.

He glanced at the crossword, but it was already finished, so he took the paper and tossed it into the recycling bin. When John, one of the explosives experts, gave him a look, he simply shrugged. 

"The crossword's done, and the Mail's only an approximation of news anyway." John laughed, and it was done, and that was that.

 

i.

A promotion to the upper levels of Q-branch wasn't entirely a surprise, because he was almost certainly the best in the world at what he did. And once he'd been in the branch he'd realised that he was the only one in the agency with his low security clearance that had been recruited in the middle of the night, or by Bill Tanner, let alone both. 

There were some jealous looks and some whispers of illegitimate boosts, but when Tanner himself came down to pick up the new contract and offer his congratulations, the rumours stopped being about hacking and started being about cronyism. 

It would almost have been ironic that the world was back to that if Chris hadn't downed four cups more Earl Grey than usual and spent an afternoon in the sick bay vomiting it all back up. 

No one said anything the next day, and he pretended he didn't notice.

 

j.

Chris found out his father had died when the obituary took up half a page in the newspaper – the Mail again. "Joining his late son in heaven," it read. He laughed bitterly. If there was a heaven, he doubted he or his father was going there.

He took the day of the funeral off and stood at the back of the church in their town in the Wessex countryside. It was as lavish and well attended as someone with so many connections and pounds deserved, and then some, with a heavy bias towards young blondes that made Chris's stomach churn even though he'd know it all along. He dressed all in black, as he had to, and prayed that no one would look twice. It had been years since he had seen any of them, not since he had been a speckled teenager with four A* A-levels. And there were so many faces that he was sure he had never seen, off at boarding schools or in Cambridge or Shanghai or Mumbai, rarely at home. 

There were a few second glances from older faces, but no one said anything, and he didn't change that. He slipped out of the church, one of the last, and left the grounds without seeing the coffin into the ground. He had done his due, and his past was far behind him for good. 

 

k.

James Bond was not allowed to die, apparently. Or at least, that was what Chris gathered from his extensive monitoring of every virtually every security camera on the planet, at M's special request.

There was no sign of Bond. A few false hits - he checked them personally, and refined the algorithms to eliminate future false alarms.

M told him to stop spending time on it after two months, which was just as well as he hadn't spent any time on it since that first week. He kept the algorithms running in the background though, just to be sure, and because he had a faint feeling that M would appreciate it.

The day they blew up M's office he had three hits before sundown.

 

l.

The descent into the bunkers of World War Two was a thrill, even if the rooms were less designed for their purposes than those at Vauxhall Cross. The white-painted brick walls, harsh fluorescent overhead lighting, even the rats that Tanner complained about bitterly as he led him to what was to be Q-branch's new home - they all added character. 

The room that was to be Q-branch's new headquarters had already had desks put in it, in the same places as their old home. He didn't spend any time there, and looked into the other rooms for Q-branch. Each one needed labelled with the part of the branch that would move in there, and Chris was tasked with planning it. 

He started with the room at the very end, and slid a piece of paper into the holder that had been put there, neatly marked "Explosives".

 

m.

He wasn't at all surprised by his promotion to Quartermaster. The old Q had retired - something about explosions and too many of them without him being the one to cause them - and he had been the first from the branch to see the new quarters. By the time he was summoned from the room that he'd designated for the coders to M's office, he knew that he had already assumed the role.

M had begun without any introduction, just a simply handshake. "We need a new Quartermaster, and you're the only one I'll consider."

He smiled wryly. "How nice of you to ask."

"You have to surrender your personal identity in the agency, and will become simply Q. You'll get adequate compensation for the change. And you'll be in charge of managing your branch's needs, starting with the move."

"I'm the only one who's not afraid of paperwork, so I get the job," he translated. By the way M's mouth quirked he knew he had hit the nail on the head. But she didn't acknowledge it.

"Your first task, Q, is to outfit Agent 007. England is counting on you."

 

n.

Q had read the file. While it was true that he could have hacked it at any point, and while the rumours that surrounded Agent 007 were enough that some of his colleagues probably had, he hadn't felt any need to. And then M had asked him to utilise every camera he could access for facial recognition. She had only given him three pictures, though, and that hadn't been enough to weed out the false positives. That was when he had hacked the file. 

He had put it the additional data, and then he had sat down and read the thing. It wasn't necessary, but he had time, and he was curious.

He was allowed to read it now that he was to outfit 007, but he didn't have time to. He wished he had, because he wanted to do his job properly - but then, he figured that M expected him to have already read it. He wasn't sure if he was proud to prove her right or not - but he was certainly thankful. 

 

o.

Q wasn't quite sure why he was supposed to outfit 007 when he was clearly unfit to return to active duty after his death and resurrection. It didn't even take five minutes of watching the surveillance cameras on the testing while Tanner was doing the debrief to tell him that. And the moment Tanner left the room - well, that was the clearest sign of all. Given the history of alcohol and nicotine abuse, he doubted that 007 ever could be - or ever had been - really fit for the job.

Then again, he was Q, and he had a history of fraud, so maybe it wasn't worth judging his history too much. And the list of missions, while almost entirely successful in the end, was also a study in disasters mitigated largely by Q-branch tech, so maybe it did make sense to outfit him now.

The files only had 007's fingerprints, and finding his palm print for the newly double-oh standard technology required some effort. Q sent down a request to Sarah, the weapons master in the practice range, and technically part of Q-branch, for the agent's weapon preferences and a subtly acquired palm print.

She provided both within the day. Walther PPK/S 9mm short, and a digital scan of the handle of a gun. Q smiled. A little bit of a challenge. Always his favourite.

 

p.

He could almost have laughed when it turned out 007's first mission with him was to Shanghai. He didn't, of course, because he knew better than to let such an obvious clue to his past slip. But he certainly recognized the irony of it.

Tickets took half an hour to book. The radio was standard issue. Once he'd secured the palm print from the digital scan of the gun, that had been fairly standard practice too, and he'd passed it on to one of his staff. Really, the most challenging part about outfitting 007 was choosing an identity, and, well, that was only an issue because there were so many to choose from.

In the end, he settled on a businessman by the name of Nathaniel Greene, whose backstory was airtight, and who Bond had used before. He slipped passport and tickets and brief overview of the identity into a plain white envelope and headed out to the National Gallery.

 

q.

Meeting Agent 007 had been illuminating, to say the least. There is only so much that can be learned from a file, even one so thick as Bond’s, and Q had gathered all of that.

He had chosen the National Gallery to be on neutral ground, and because his office was being installed that day and it would be easier for all of them if he weren't there to supervise that process. _The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up_ had been a very deliberate choice - there were benches there, he knew, and Turner had always been one of his favourites, but that hadn’t been why. The combination of the great ship of the old battles and the steamship showing it to its grave, though, was a note to Bond, though he wasn't sure if the agent would get it: you're old, everyone says you're on your last legs, and I know it.

His entry line had been designed to... well, it hadn't been designed, per se, so much as it was the accurate summation of his Cambridge education, and an explicit statement of why he'd chosen that painting. As for what he expected 007's reaction to be, well, he needed to be impressed, even more than he needed to impress.

"A bloody big ship" did not impress. Q was not entirely surprised.

It sidestepped into a battle of wits, though, and maybe a conversation that said everything the painting did for a new era. He thinks that in the end he did impress, and he was impressed in turn. 

The spots comment was just uncalled for, though.


End file.
